Human Resources – 1BusinessWorld

Posted on May 4, 2023 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

Mercu meets deskless workers where they are

Many employee engagement and retention tools were created with the assumption that workers spent most of their time at desks. But the majority of the global workforce is deskless, meaning that they are usually on the move and don’t have constant access to a laptop. A lot of them are also dissatisfied with their jobs, which means companies need to deal with high churn and low retention rates. Based in Singapore, Mercu wants to help with a platform designed specifically to reach deskless employees.
Launched in November 2022, Mercu announced today it has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from 500 Global, TEN13, Flying Fox Ventures, Archangel Ventures, XA Network and returning investor Sequoia Capital India.
Mercu is used by companies in retail, logistics, hospitality and manufacturing to onboard employees, communicate with them and help increase engagement. Its customers include Mexican fast …

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

The $2 Billion Question of Who You Are at Work

Personality testing was largely an outgrowth of World War I. The American military wanted to screen for soldiers who had “weak constitutions” and might be more susceptible to what was then called shell shock, so it created a test, the Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, with questions like: “Did you ever think you had lost your manhood?” Not long after, a Carl Jung-obsessed homemaker, Katharine Cook Briggs, and her daughter, Isabel Myers, developed their own personality inventory, despite having no psychological training, which they started distributing in 1943. Each year, more than two million people now determine their Myers-Briggs type.Those early assessments were trying to pin down answers to an existential question: Who are you? Wallflower or life of the party? Flighty or reliable? Alternative t …

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

HR automation platform Omni wants to be the ‘Rippling of Southeast Asia’

Omni wants to be the human resources platform to rule them all—or at least all HR-related tasks. The software enables HR teams to digitize employee records, automate administrative tasks like employee onboarding and time-off management, and integrate employee data from different systems. Based in Singapore, it is currently active there and in Indonesia, and plans to roll out in other Southeast Asian markets after localizing for employment regulations.
The startup announced today it is coming out of stealth mode with $2.4 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round co-led by Alpha JWC Ventures and Picus Capital, with participation from FEBE Ventures, Basis Set Ventures, Ratio Ventures and Frances Kang at Horizons Ventures. It …

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

inFeedo gets $12M to help employers find out how their workforce really feels

Employee sentiment can be hard to gauge, even at smaller businesses. This can lead to burnout and attrition, when managers least expect it. inFeedo wants to solve that problem by acting as a bridge between workers and their managers, with surveys performed through a chatbot called Amber, which inFeedo refers to as a “Chief Listening Officer.” The company announced today it has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures, with participation from Tiger Global and returning investors like Bling Capital.
This brings inFeedo’s total raised since the U.S.-headquartered company was founded in 2016 to $16 million. Part of the funding will be used for the company’s second E …

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

Singapore-based StaffAny gets $3.4M led by GGV to simplify shift management

A SaladStop worker uses StaffAny to clock in
StaffAny, a management platform for SMEs with shift workers, has raised a $3.4 million Series A led by GGV Capital. The round included participation from East Ventures, FreakOut Shinsei Fund, Far East Ventures, Farquhar Venture Capital and angel investors including Allen Shim, former CFO of Slack. The round will be used to expand into more markets and develop new features for StaffAny’s platform, which currently operates in seven countries, including Singapore, where it is based, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It brings the startup’s total raised to $4.2 million.
Co-founder Janson Seah told TechCrunch that StaffAny is used by businesses with more than 30 employees, and serves clients ranging from single outlets to chains with more than 1,000 employees. “Whilst we serve smaller businesses …

Posted on January 18, 2022 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

South Korean HR automation platform flex raises $32M Series B at a $287M valuation

South Korea-based human resources management platform flex announced today it has closed a $32 million Series B round at a valuation of $287 million. The latest funding, which brings its total raised to $42 million, was led by Greenoaks, with participation from DST Global Partners.
The startup’s mission is to enable corporations to automate and streamline manual human resources work processes and focus more on people. Its automation tools optimize the employee experience to ensure seamless data flow across groups for use in payroll, e-signature support, on/offboarding and people analytics. It also plans to launch performance review and talents relation management tools in the first quarter of 2022.
“At flex we define HR as Human Relations, not Human Resources. We believe HR teams deserve world-class software to manage and service their employees, but today it’s clear that many organizations still use spreadsheets or legacy products to make ends meet, said Haenam Cha …

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

Your Head of H.R. Is Now Basically the School Nurse

For George Boué, who ran H.R. at Stiles, a commercial real estate company based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the anxieties of his job began to increase this fall. He kept jerking awake at 3 a.m., his mind racing with questions. How was he going to roll out a vaccine mandate to his colleagues who viewed it as an intrusion? More important, how was he going to keep everybody in his office safe?Mr. Boué, who is fully vaccinated, was surrounded by friends in South Florida who were citing misinformation about the vaccine. He estimated that one-third of his 300-person staff is most likely not fully vaccinated. When the …

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

Jobless for a Year? Employment Gaps Might Be Less of a Problem Now.

Some employers regard applicants with long periods of unemployment unfavorably, research shows — even if many are reluctant to admit it.The Status of U.S. JobsThe pandemic continues to impact the U.S. economy in a multitude of ways. One key factor to keep an eye on is the job market and how it changes as the economic recovery moves forward.“Employers don’t often articulate why but the idea, they believe, is that people who are out of work are damaged in some way, which is why they are out of work” said Peter Cappelli, the director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.Some economists believe the pandemic’s unique effects on the economy may have changed things. Notably, the pandemic destroyed millions of jobs seemingly all at once, especially in the travel, leisure and hospitality industries. Many people could not, or chose not to, work because of health concerns or family responsibilities.“For people who were just laid off because of Covid, will there be a stigma? I don’t really think so,” Mr. Cappelli sa …

Posted on October 12, 2021 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

Personio, an HR platform for SMEs, raises $270M on a $6.3B valuation, expands into workflow automation

HR technology has been thrown into the spotlight in the last 20 months: COVID-19 has changed the way we work, and so how we manage people in the world of work has had to change, too. Today, a Munich-based startup called Personio, which has built a big business out of how to address that issue specifically for small and medium enterprises, is announcing $270 million in funding on the heels of strong demand for its services, and to help it fuel its next steps. With this Series E, Personio’s valuation is jumping up to $6.3 billion, making it one of the most …

Posted on October 9, 2021 by Stylianos Hatzakis — Leave a comment

The future of China’s work culture

In a late-August ruling, China’s supreme court declared one of the country’s most infamous work practices illegal.
Known as “996,” the term is shorthand for a work schedule spanning from 9AM to 9PM, six days per week. Though popularized by the country’s soaring tech firms, often evoking images of hip urban startup employees with stock option plans hustling before being made millionaires by an IPO or funding round, “996” has evolved in how it is understood and applied by employers and employees, as well as how it is viewed by regulators.
Indeed, while the August 26 Supreme Court decision and …

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